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Friday, April 16, 2010

Sarth: Now in Multiple Dimensions

We now return you to your normally scheduled tales of noobraid. While not guaranteed to be text-wall free (generally the opposite, in fact), I can promise that this post will be free from quotes from Blizzard. You're welcome.

Raid almost, kind of, got started on time! There was a small detail where I was in Dragonblight waiting to start the weekly (Sartharion) and everyone else was headed to Vault. Not a big deal. Although, I think some people see a certain amount of irony in summoning a warlock.

Nothing interesting in Vault. We had a good group. Militia has started healing on his Shaman, so our guild is certainly gaining some diversity in our available characters for raiding even if we aren't technically gaining new players.

Our Vault group was not interested in our plans for the rest of the evening: Sartharion with 3 drakes. So we grabbed some PUGs and headed off into the Obsidian Sanctum.

Now, I don't think anyone can deny that Sarth3D is HARD. You don't have much more than a minute before the drakes enrage. And this is pretty much guaranteed to wipe everyone out. Assuming you still have people alive even at this point after lava walls, whelp spawns, and stupid fire elementals.

We cleared the trash, no big deal. I mistakenly pulled one of the groups because I was CONVINCED that Dumm had already attacked them. I survived much to my amazement, and probably due to the sheer awesomeness of Dumm's tanking and Militia's healing. Oops. I'll try to not do that again. Except for when I'm bored and the Eye of Kilrogg sounds like an exceptionally good idea.

Penguin is on his rogue and he "resets" Sarth so the rest of us can get into position. After several wipes, this simply entailed finding the large pile of bones and standing on it. But for the first attempt, Penguin showed us where to stand to have the best chances of avoiding a GIANT WALL OF LAVA to the face.

When combat actually starts, Dumm picks up Sartharion and we pop EVERYTHING. I was running Demonology - which, in retrospect, I probably should have switched from at least once to see how the two specs are really comparing at the moment - so for me that's Metamorphosis. For Militia, it's Heroism. For Takk, it's Army. It was nuts. Sartharion was down to about 40% in the time it took for Metamorphosis to wear off.

And the combination of my current haste rating and heroism and whatever else was going on was just absolutely shocking. Incinerates were going off in a second. No, really. ONE second. Can has all the time, please?

But anyway, the stars were aligned for that first attempt because Sartharion saw 1% health before me and my 9 friends ate dirt. I think this first one was our best attempt. Not only attempt, to be sure, but probably the best.

We persisted! For the next hour and half we threw ourselves against Sartharion and his twilight drakes. We had pugs come and go. We had a really awesome mage at one point that topped Sen on the meters. Everyone who came in with us did very decent damage. I was quite impressed, all things considered.

After many more wipes and two visits to Jeeves to repair gear, we called it. We were going down consistently when Sarth hit 8-12% health. So, for kicks and giggles, we went and killed two of the drakes and then went back to Sarth to show him a resounding What For.

We had some angsty moments: when DPS wondered "Why don't I have enough deeps to kill a giant, angry dragon?" When tanks wondered "Why can't I stay alive when Sarth hits 10%?" When healers said "Watch your own selves when Tenebron descends because I can't keep you guys and the tank up at that point."

We called the night after that so that sleep could happen for those of us that work on Friday mornings. Next week we return to ICC and attempt to play dress-up with kill some princes. All in all, I think everyone had a very enjoyable night. It was frustrating, sure, but never boring!

Wiping repeatedly on Sartharion has left me severely short on funds. Aioka recently received Tome of Cold Weather Flight so the accumulated gold amongst my characters is not much.

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About Me

I am a laid-back person who enjoys video games and spending time with friends. I like to create things; be it new characters, blogs or websites, or stories. I am an instructor of computer science. This allows me to bang my head against interesting problems on a daily basis and creates a continual need for caffeine and WoW.